USA Today Executive Named Editor of Atlanta Papers

Ronald D. Martin, one of the chief architects of USA Today, has been named editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, five months after the stormy resignation of editor and former New York Times Washington bureau chief Bill Kovach prompted protest marches in the streets Atlanta.

Arnold Rosenfeld, who has served as interim editor, will become editor-in-chief of Cox Newspapers, the parent company of the Atlanta papers.

The announcement signals an apparent return in philosophy at the Atlanta papers, which had consciously imitated USA Today’s use of color and short stories before hiring Kovach from the New York Times in 1986.

Kovach promised to bring Atlanta “world class newspapers.” The Journal-Constitution recently won the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting. But his efforts soon sparked conflict--both with downtown business interests and those championing “redneck culture”--a conflict that seemed to some to mirror the growing pains of Atlanta and the New South.

When he suddenly resigned last fall, after disputes with management for control of budgets, philosophy and Washington coverage, the staff paid for a full-page ad in protest and later marched through the city’s streets to get him back.

In Martin, Atlanta will get the editor who headed the planning group that designed USA Today and was one of the “Gang of Four” Gannett officials who oversaw its early implementation, as they were known to USA Today staff.

According to “The Making of McPaper,” an in-house history of USA Today, Martin was initially bitter when he was passed over to be the paper’s first editor. John Curley, now Gannett chairman, got the job. But Martin eventually was persuaded to stay. He has remained in the post of executive editor ever since, and in 1987 was given the title of vice president as well, in charge of coordination with Gannett papers.

Martin said in an interview that while he thought some of USA Today’s principles might translate to Atlanta, it also must be “the memory of the place, the paper of record to a degree” and thus do “a lot of things that are not terribly glitzy.”

Said Atlanta Publisher Jay Smith: “It would be a terrible mistake to infer that we are going to become an Atlanta version of USA Today any more than we ever intended to become an Atlanta version of the New York Times.”

Martin apparently was a late choice as replacement. Talks with him did not start until a few weeks ago and got serious only within the last week.

The Journal-Constitution publishes in the morning as the Atlanta Constitution and in the afternoon as the Atlanta Journal on weekdays and in a combined edition on Saturday and Sunday.

The newspapers have a combined reporting staff but separate editorial staffs.

Martin previously was editor of the Baltimore News-American and US magazine and was managing editor of the Cocoa (Fla.) Today, the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, the Miami Herald and the New York Post.